author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
With crappy weather on the cards for the Easter weekend, we decided to do something a bit more relaxing. I had never been to the Pembrokeshire Coast, with its rugged cliffs and secluded coves, nor walked the coastal Preseli Hills that were the source of the giant stones of Stonehenge.
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Yes, folks. It’s time for the next mesmerising instalment of my award-winning video diaries. I left you a month ago having passed through the villages and oases of the narrow Markha Valley. High up in the wide open spaces of the Nimaling Valley, it was time to tackle the mountains we had come to climb.
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It’s over three years since I last released a series of my trademark shit videos on YouTube. Some of you are wondering if a yeti got my tongue. Eighteen months have gone by since I trekked in Ladakh, and the hilarious footage that I took has been lying untouched on my hard drive. It’s time to give it an airing.
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Another Christmas, and another cottage in Scotland for a week. What would the weather hold in store for us this year, and would we get up any mountains? The forecast wasn’t promising, but one good day in the hills could make it all worthwhile.
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The weather had been good for the best part of two weeks, but the rain gods were preparing for the last dance. We were about to cross the Spasimata Slabs, the most dangerously exposed section of the trek, and we were going to cross them at the worst possible time.
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When I signed off the last post, I was enjoying a delicious pork rosti and a pichet of vin rosé at a palatial hotel tucked away in the forests of Corsica. How on earth did I prise myself away from that luxurious setting and get on with the hardest section of the GR20?
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I’ve known about the GR20 for over 20 years, but it slipped to the back of my mind as I focused on peak bagging in the greater ranges. I sensed that long-distance hiking in Europe was something I would enjoy later in life. I guessed I must have reached that stage now.
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My visit to Knoydart with Edita that I wrote about in my previous post, was so different from my first visit in 2007 that I could have been walking in a different world. I thought I would dig it out my diary of that first trip for a laugh, so here it is.
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Sixteen years ago, I set out on a 5-day winter backpacking trip to climb three Munros in Knoydart, a remote peninsula in northwest Scotland. It turned into an epic that I was lucky to survive. Earlier this year, unexpectedly, I found myself with a chance to make amends.
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We decided to continue our Cuillin reconnaissance. But what to reconnoitre? Our guide Karl suggested climbing the Dubh Slabs and staying overnight at Camasunary. I’d known about the Slabs for years, but never imagined I would ever climb them myself
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